Coalition Technologies (www.coalitiontechnologies.com) is a Los Angeles and Seattle based web design, development and online marketing firm that was founded in 2009 by Joel Gross. The primary service offered by Coalition Technologies is search engine optimization (SEO). Gross spent four years as the SEO at Visible Technologies prior to his departure from the company. Coalition Technologies currently ranks #1 in Google for “Los Angeles SEO”.

Joel took his knowledge and a cheap laptop and used them to build a company that currently employs 26 full time individuals with two office locations (Los Angeles and Seattle). Coalition Technologies’ includes FOX Network, Harvard University, Jack Daniels, Moody’s, and Zumba as some of its clients.

Joel Gross

Joel Gross founded the company during the onset of the economic recession. He was in a stable job that offered security and a reliable paycheck as well as benefits, but Joel had an idea that he wanted to bring to life. Many of his family and friends advised him not to risk starting a business when the economy was just about to go under, but Joel decided to put everything on the line and quit his job at Visible Technologies, packed up all of his belongings in his small Seattle apartment and moved to Los Angeles on a gut-feeling.

His motivation to found a company was a result of Joel’s prior business experiences. While he was in the process of earning his Finance degree from the University of Washington Joel interned at Merrill Lynch and quickly discovered that he was not interested in pursuing the corporate ladder and the seed of entrepreneurship was planted in his mind. After graduating and working at Visible Technologies for a while, Joel found out that he was unusually gifted at figuring our search engine algorithms and then implementing his knowledge to increase his client’s rankings in those search engines. At one point he went down to Los Angeles to visit a friend and discovered that he really enjoyed the feeling of growth and new ideas there, so he began planning his exodus from Washington for California and the rest is history.

In addition to SEO, Coalition Technologies also offers web design and development amongst its services. The company also works with a variety of ecommerce platforms like BigCommerce, Magento, and Shopify. Coalition is essentially a “one-stop” location for all of a company’s digital marketing needs. Coalition Technologies expert web design team is familiar and skilled with a variety of languages like HTML, CSS, PHP, MySQL, ASP.NET, C#, MS SQL, Javascript, AJAX, JQUERY. Coalition Technologies has the ability to take a client’s vision of a business and create its website with ecommerce functionality and then Coalition Technologies SEO prowess has the know-how to market its clients to their respective target audiences. Coalition Technologies prides itself on being a white-hat SEO provider where it relies on legitimate techniques to increase its client’s visibility in the online world. Instead of solely relying upon link building techniques like most other SEO firms, Coalition Technologies utilizes unique content and a series of best practices to take its clients from the last page on Google to the first page.

Another important aspect of Coalition Technologies’ SEO services is developing and managing effective Pay Per Click campaigns where its client’s online advertisements are optimized for profitability while keeping the expenses low. Coalition Technologies does this by using data-driven metrics as a fundamental part of the decision process.

However, Coalition Technologies doesn’t sacrifice its personal side for the technical processes. The company prides itself on acting as an advocate and teacher for its clients. Many of Coalition Technologies’ employees will spend a significant portion of his or her time working directly with clients and helping those clients understand every step of the process and if at any time a client wants to take a step back and analyze things, then Coalition Technologies does that too. The company has found that keeping the clients involved in the process and in control of important decisions allows the client to have a hands-on approach with the creation of his or her business. As a part of Coalition Technologies educational outreach to clients, founder and CEO Joel Gross uploads industry specific videos in order to explain and simplify some of the more complicated topics at http://www.youtube.com/user/joelrgross.

As previously stated, Coalition Technologies employees 26 full time employees (15 developers, 2 graphic designers, 6 SEO specialists, and 3 project managers) and 11 of those telecommute. One advantage of having a widespread company is that there is always some available to help customers regardless of their time zone.

The best advice Joel Gross ever received when it came to his business was to hire slow and fire fast. Any small business owner understands that managing employees can be an extraordinarily challenging task and it can be hard to motivate employees to be as enthusiastic about working for the company as the founder, but it all comes down to who you pick, so you better pick them carefully, but if you need to fire an employee, then don’t hesitate for a second.

The most difficult issue that Joel had to overcome when founding Coalition Technologies was overcoming apathy when the results weren’t rolling in like he had hoped, but through hard work and dedication Joel made things work and set Coalition Technologies on the path to success. On the flip side of things, the best decision Joel made was to take the risk to found the company. There have been a lot of burdens to bear, but ultimately, the feelings of success and self-worth provided through the experience of struggling to found a successful company have been an incredibly fulfilling experience for Joel and Coalition Technologies is now one of Los Angeles’ premier SEO and web design firms and is always improving and expanding.

Through a lot of work Coalition Technologies is a profitable company that is in the black and all projections indicate continued growth and increased revenues. Many of the techniques that Joel employed to make Coalition Technologies included using the services the company offers to clients for itself. The company has a strong reputation for sound SEO strategies and building websites that clients are more than happy with, plus Coalition Technologies clients are often a large source of new leads, because of their recommendations to coworkers, family and friends to use Coalition Technologies.

With an eye to the future, Coalition Technologies is continuing to develop its reputation management and email marketing services as a few other in-house projects. The company has already made some incredible leaps and bounds within its first three years and it has experienced exponential growth and everyone is excited to see what the next three years will bring for the company. Also, as the client base expands and comes to include larger and larger clients, Coalition Technologies will come to be world renowned for its professional services. Furthermore, Joel plans on staying as the head of Coalition Technologies for as long as possible and has no desire to see it taken over by some other organization. His work is his passion and Joel wants to oversee Coalition Technologies all the way until it is the largest company in the world.

It is funny how someone can take a cheap laptop and build something so much larger, but when it comes to doing big things, one needs to look no further than Coalition Technologies.